Most everyone is familiar with the well known recreational activity of setting up dominos in a row in closely spaced relationship, and then knocking them down by pushing over the first domino of the row which in turn pushes over the second, and so on, until all of the dominos have fallen. In order to cause all of the dominos in the row to fall, it is necessary that they be spaced apart a distance such that each domino will cause the succeeding domino in the row to tip to the point where it will freely fall because the center of mass of the domino is moved beyond a point of stability. Thus, by so spacing the dominos each one will push over the adjacent succeeding domino in the row and they all fall as in a continuous wave of falling dominos, much to the delight of children and oftentimes adults also.
The spacing between the dominos will vary depending on whether the dominos are set up to reset on a short or a long edge, although almost invariably they are set up on a short edge. The spacing can still vary within a range in relation to the length of the dominos which is approximately one third to two thirds the length of the dominos.
In more recent years, the pasttime activity of setting up a few dozen dominos in a row and knocking them over has grown into the adult sport of setting up many hundreds or thousands of dominos in a very complex pattern or rows, curves, cross-overs, etc., such that each domino will still contact an adjacent domino and push it over regardless of the shape of the pattern which is set up. Some of these patterns, as recently seen on television shows, are so enormous and complex that tens of thousands of dominos are set up in patterns so intricate that it requires many days to set up the pattern and twenty to thirty minutes for all of the dominos to fall.
Prior to the present invention, it has been necessary to set up the dominos manually and to do so one domino at a time. It will be readily understood that it is a very time consuming process to set up a complex pattern of hundreds or thousands of dominos for the reason that each domino is being set up on its short or least stable edge and therefore each domino must be handled with great care in order to avoid inadvertently knocking over the domino while it is being set up. Obviously the consequence of inadvertently knocking over the domino is that the entire pattern will be prematurely knocked down. Also, considerable care and attention must be devoted to preventing the inadvertent knocking over of any domino already set up in the pattern since the same frustrating consequence will result. As briefly mentioned above, some of the extremely complicated patterns which have been seen on television have taken several days to set up, even under carefully controlled environmental conditions, because of the time that is required to manually set up each domino on its short edge with the proper spacing from the adjacent domino and with sufficient stability to assure that the domino will stay in the upright position when the person setting up the domino releases his grasp.